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  “Oh fuck,” he said and when the doorbell rang, he yanked it open, prepared to deck Shanna if she was going to yap about Min anymore.

  It was Cyn, looking hot as hell in her blue halter top and short black skirt. She tilted her head up at him and her glossy black hair swung back. “I know you’re upset,” she said, softly. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

  “I’m all right,” he said, as she stepped closer.

  “No, you’re not,” she said. “She hit you hard.” She held up a bottle of Glenlivet. “Come on, talk about it. You’ll feel better.”

  She’ll do anything I ask, Cal thought. And the world is full of women like her. Why do I need Min?

  Cynthie smiled up at him, lovely and warm. “Do I get to come in?”

  “No,” Cal said. “I have to make a phone call.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cynthie said, “I can wait,” and he remembered Min saying, “You get to know the real us and then you leave us.” Cynthie smiled up at him, her heart in her eyes, and he thought, Oh, hell.

  He shook his head at her. “I’m sorry. Somebody explained to me what I’ve done to you. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, I never meant to hurt anybody, but I never meant to marry you, either.”

  Cynthie took a deep breath and nodded. “That’s all right, I can wait—”

  “There’s somebody else,” Cal said, as gently as he could. “I’m sorry, but I’m in love with somebody else.”

  She flinched. “No. You love me.”

  “I never said that. You know that.”

  “Yes, but you do.” Her hands gripped the bottle tighter. “You don’t realize it, but you do. We’re perfect for each other.”

  He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see how desperate she was.

  “It’s Min,” Cynthie said. “I know it’s Min. Look, she’s a nice woman, but she’s not me.”

  “I know,” Cal said. “That’s the problem.” Cynthie’s face twisted, and he said, “I’m sorry, Cyn.”

  He shut the door in her face and leaned against the door for a moment, trying not to think about how much damage he’d done to her, not even wanting to think about anybody else.

  Except Min.

  Fix this, he told himself and sat down to figure out a way.

  At about the same time Shanna was reading Cal the riot act, Min was listening to Liza say, “This is really good,” as she speared the last marsala-soaked mushroom at Min’s dining room table. Then Liza said, “Tell me again why we’re doing this.”

  “Because we always had chicken marsala on Tuesday nights,” Min said, stabbing her chicken with no enthusiasm as Elvis prowled about her ankles, impatient for leftovers. “I’m trying to cloud the association.”

  “Very practical,” Liza said. “Except you’re miserable, so there’s not enough cloud in the world, babe.”

  “May I have the butter, please?” Diana said, picking up another piece of bread from Emilio’s.

  Bonnie pushed the butter dish her way. “Have you heard from him?” she asked Min.

  “Of course not,” Min said, revving up her anger again so she wouldn’t have to think about how she’d been waiting for a phone call for two days. “He’s mad at me. Can you believe it? He’s mad at me. Did I make a bet? Noooo. But he’s—”

  “Oh, please, no more of this,” Liza said. “You’ve bitched about him for two days. Face it, the man has a point.”

  Min put down her fork, and Diana stopped buttering her bread.

  “He does not have a point,” Min snapped. “This whole mess is because he does not have a point and now you’re turning on me? It’s not enough that Bonnie sandbagged me with that fairy tale garbage, now you—”

  “It’s not garbage,” Bonnie said. “You got the fairy tale. You got the handsome prince who loved you. It worked.”

  “It did not work,” Min said, slamming her hand down on the table. “He went into a snit and left. Just my luck, I get a snitty prince. Which is why he wasn’t a prince. Which is why I don’t believe that garbage. I do not believe in the fairy tale, okay?”

  “I don’t think it matters,” Bonnie said, mild as ever. “The fairy tale believes in you.”

  Min turned to Liza. “Tell her.”

  Liza leaned her elbow on the table. “She’s right.”

  Min flopped back in her chair. “Oh, for crying out loud. If this wasn’t my apartment, I’d leave.”

  “Well, look at it from his point of view,” Liza said. “He didn’t make the bet. He tried not to date you, but he had to keep coming back because he was nuts about you, and you kept kissing him and then turning him down. He was patient, he charmed your parents, he was good to your friends, he found your snow globe, he taught you to cook, he got you a cat, for Christ’s sake, and then it turns out that while he was knocking himself out for you, you were playing him for a fool.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Min said, but her anger cooled considerably.

  “He really is a sweetie,” Diana said, licking butter off her lip.

  “Liza’s right,” Bonnie said. “You know how awful school was for all three of these boys. They’re all sensitive about being dumb. You hit Cal right on his sore spot, in front of his friends, in front of Cynthie, in front of David.”

  “Ouch,” Min said faintly. She tried to summon up her old outrage over the bet, but after two days of venting, she’d been running out of steam anyway.

  “I know you needed to be mad to deal with the pain,” Liza said. “I do that, too. But if you want him back, get over it. Because if there wasn’t a bet—”

  “There wasn’t,” Min said miserably. “I believe him on that.”

  “Then he’s given you everything and you haven’t given him a damn thing.”

  “That’s pretty harsh,” Bonnie said to Liza.

  “Why didn’t you just ask him about the bet?” Liza said.

  “I did,” Min said.

  “You said, ‘Did you make a bet with David that you could sleep with me in a month?’ ”

  “No,” Min said, not meeting her eyes. “I asked him if there was anything he wasn’t telling me.”

  Bonnie nodded. “And what did he say?”

  Min sat back. “He kept confessing to things that weren’t the bet.”

  “That must have been fun for everyone,” Liza said. “Why didn’t you flat out ask him?”

  Min put her head in her hands. “I was afraid, okay? You know how all those people say, ‘If they just talked about their problems, they’d all go away’? Well, I bet none of those people talk about their problems. I mean, it sounds good, but it’s a terrible gamble.” She looked up at Liza. “I knew he made that bet. I heard him. And I . . .” She stopped and swallowed. “I knew I only had a month and I wanted that month with him.” She shook her head. “Not everybody faces life head-on the way that you do.”

  “Well, they should,” Liza said. “You screwed up. So now you’re going to have to grovel.”

  “What?” Bonnie said, while Min gaped at Liza, and Diana watched them all, fascinated.

  Liza got up from the table, picked up Min’s phone, and brought it over to her. “Call him. Tell him you were wrong, he was right, and you’ll do anything to make it up to him.”

  Min swallowed. “You want me to grovel?”

  “Yes,” Liza said. “I’m not going to watch you lose him because of your dumb pride. Call and offer him anything he wants if he’ll take you back.”

  Min looked at Bonnie, who nodded.

  Min looked at the phone. If she called Cal, she’d at least get to hear his voice. How pathetic was that? “Pathetic,” she said out loud.

  “Only if you let this go,” Liza said. “For once in your life, do the irrational, reckless thing. Call him.”

  Min sat there, frozen in fear. Then she took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

  Cal was rehearsing his “How about a late dinner tomorrow?” speech when the phone rang, but when he picked it up and heard Min’s tentative “Hi?” he forg